The Ticket Out - Hardcover

Helen Knode was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1957. She worked as a film critic and columnist for the L.A. Weekly from 1985 to 1991. She now lives in Northern California with her husband, bestselling author James Ellroy. This is her first novel.

"An astonishingly muscular, poetic, nerve-cauterized literary debut.
Helen Knode is a thoroughbred provocateuse." -- Bruce Wagner, author of I'm Losing You

"Helen Knode is so canny about noir atmospherics and gestures that her still more cunning emotional refinements slip up on you like a silent stalker down one of the secret tunnels that underpin her coruscating vision of Hollywood past, Hollywood future. Ann Whitehead is a sly, challenging, and ultimately dazzling creation. As a wounded and damaged daughter turned bored and sardonic LA film critic, Whitehead comes to discover how little she knows about the movies, or her own desires. Elegiac and electrifying, The Ticket Out is her -- and our -- education, and a shrewd, troubling book." -- Robert Polito

"An astonishingly muscular, poetic, nerve-cauterized literary debut.
Helen Knode is a thoroughbred provocateuse." -- Bruce Wagner, author of I'm Losing You

"Helen Knode is so canny about noir atmospherics and gestures that her still more cunning emotional refinements slip up on you like a silent stalker down one of the secret tunnels that underpin her coruscating vision of Hollywood past, Hollywood future. Ann Whitehead is a sly, challenging, and ultimately dazzling creation. As a wounded and damaged daughter turned bored and sardonic LA film critic, Whitehead comes to discover how little she knows about the movies, or her own desires. Elegiac and electrifying, The Ticket Out is her -- and our -- education, and a shrewd, troubling book." -- Robert Polito

Ann Whitehead is sick of her job. She's a movie critic for a counterculture rag in Los Angeles and she needs a break. Instead of a break, she gets a murder. A beautiful woman dies in Ann's bathtub and Ann feels compelled to investigate. The victim is a film school grad and Industry hopeful: it's the Hollywood story Ann has always wanted to write.
LAPD is also working the murder. Douglas Lockwood is the lead investigator, a talented detective whose career has been derailed by scandal.
Ann falls hard for him but won't let herself know it. She's too busy chasing leads, digging at the victim's past, and turning Lockwood into a journalistic challenge: he never talks to the media. On his side, Lockwood wishes Ann would go away. He doesn't need a girl journalist running loose, messing with his crime scene and upsetting the witnesses.
Ann's search for the killer becomes a search for the victim's missing script. The lost script tells of another murder, yet another dead woman, in L.A. in 1944. Suddenly there are two killers and a complicated conspiracy spanning decades. As the number of dead and dying women grows, Ann has a revelation: the people she meets want into Hollywood so bad they'll commit any crime to get there.

Ann Whitehead is sick of her job. She's a movie critic for a counterculture rag in Los Angeles and she needs a break. Instead of a break, she gets a murder. A beautiful woman dies in Ann's bathtub and Ann feels compelled to investigate. The victim is a film school grad and Industry hopeful: it's the Hollywood story Ann has always wanted to write.
LAPD is also working the murder. Douglas Lockwood is the lead investigator, a talented detective whose career has been derailed by scandal.
Ann falls hard for him but won't let herself know it. She's too busy chasing leads, digging at the victim's past, and turning Lockwood into a journalistic challenge: he never talks to the media. On his side, Lockwood wishes Ann would go away. He doesn't need a girl journalist running loose, messing with his crime scene and upsetting the witnesses.
Ann's search for the killer becomes a search for the victim's missing script. The lost script tells of another murder, yet another dead woman, in L.A. in 1944. Suddenly there are two killers and a complicated conspiracy spanning decades. As the number of dead and dying women grows, Ann has a revelation: the people she meets want into Hollywood so bad they'll commit any crime to get there.